Congress can level the playing field on campaign finance

     Ten years ago when Congress was considering the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation, I entered into a running dialogue with reform advocates on the role of soft money (corporate money, union dues or unlimited individual contributions) in federal elections.  As a recent chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (1995-98), I knew quite a bit about the subject.
     It went something like this:
     Frost:  If you totally eliminate soft money contributions to national political party committees (DNC, RNC, DSCC, RSCC, DCCC and NRCC), won’t that make it much harder for the parties to conduct get-out-the vote activities and to defend their candidates from independent third party attacks?
     Reformers:  No it won’t.  Parties can still raise significant amounts of hard money (given by individuals and PACs in compliance with strict federal limits).  Also, we will prevent corporate and labor outside groups from attacking our candidates within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election by a specific section of the law which we believe is constitutional
     Frost: What if you are wrong? What if the courts throw out the 30 day primary ban and 60 day general election ban on corporate and union money?  Won’t we then have the worst of both worlds…political parties will still be prevented from raising soft money to protect their candidates and corporations and unions can spend freely to criticize them.
     Reformers:  We don’t believe that will happen.
     Well, pigs can fly, hell has frozen over, the Saints are in the Super Bowl and the reformers were wrong…the U.S. Supreme Court recently opened the flood gates for corporate federal “electioneering communications” right up until election day.  Corporations still can’t give directly to federal candidates, but they can now engage in lots of “free speech” as long as this is not coordinated with a federal candidate. 
     This decision will take much of campaigning away from candidates and their supporters and put it into the hands of corporate/labor special interests.  It is possible that in the future corporate and labor “independent expenditures” may easily exceed the amount spent by many candidates themselves.
     So where do we go from here to level the playing field?
     Here are some suggestions:
(1)    Congress could pass legislation, making it clear the Supreme Court’s decision does not apply to domestic subsidiaries of foreign corporations (there are quite a few of those today).  The Supreme Court in its decision specifically said it did not reach that subject and President Obama has raised the question about foreign influence in our elections.
(2)    Congress could pass legislation permitting corporations and unions to give a limited amount directly to each of the six national party committees (say $100,000) which could be used to offset  independent expenditures attacking federal candidates during the 60 days preceding a general election.
(3)    Congress could pass a constitutional amendment (which would need to be ratified by 3/4s of the states) specifically reversing the Supreme Court decision and banning any corporate or union independent “electioneering communications” within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election.
(4)    Congress could significantly raise the limits on the amount of hard money that individuals, corporate PACs and union PACs can give to the six national political committees (as to each individual committee and in the aggregate) in any two-year cycle.
     The horse is out of barn and it will be very difficult to get him back in.  Let’s at least try so that the American political system is not totally buried in an avalanche of corporate and labor dues money.

Frost, who served as a Democratic member of Congress from 1979 to 2004,
is a partner in the law firm of Polsinelli, Shughart.